John Richardsim/Editing Guide

The following is a series of lessons on editing the wiki. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a PM on the forums. Note that this guide will remain a work in progress for a little while.

Lesson 1 - Types of Pages and Basic Editing

Introduction

Alright, I'd like to start off this first lesson by thanking you for taking the time to learn more about the wiki. As I have recently noted in the State of the Wiki: November 2015 address, I greatly appreciate help with the wiki. It is a project that I greatly care about, but it just cannot be done alone.

Rules

Before we dive in, let me first remind you of a few rules about the wiki:

You must be a registered member on the forum to edit pages.
Please respect copyrights. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission.
Editing this wiki to the disadvantage of other users through vandalism, misinformation, or removal of event help is not tolerated.
Please try your best to format your work well. Try to write in a formal style (i.e., avoid writing in first and/or second person) (the exception to this is in user pages; use as much first and second person as you wish).
Consider moving and/or revising old information instead of deleting.
- Before removing significant amounts of information, please describe why the information is being removed in a talk page.

Types of Pages

First, let's discuss the common types of pages, as these are terms will be used often:

Event Pages - these pages contain information regarding both current and previous official events and trial events.

Talk pages are accessed by clicking the "Discussion" link at the top right of the corresponding article.

Team Pages - these contain information about a school/team (example: Interlake High School).
State Pages - contain information about Science Olympiad in a specific state, including a list of teams, competitions within the state, and previous state champions and runner-ups (example: Michigan).
Invitational Pages - contain information about specific invitational tournaments (example: Tiger Invitational).
User Pages - these pages are personal pages to describe a bit about yourself and your time in Science Olympiad.
Talk Pages - these are for discussing the content of a particular article (example: Talk:Anatomy and Physiology). They may be accessed or created by clicking on the "Discussion" link in the top right of a regular page.
Test Exchange - these are lists of practice tests for the official events of their corresponding year.

Basic Editing

The location of the links for the editors for the entire page (A) and specific sections (B).

Okay, now that we've established the typical kinds of pages, let's learn how to make a basic edit. You may access the editor for an entire page by clicking the "Edit" link in the top right of the page you want to edit, or you may also access the editor for a specific section by clicking the "[edit]" link found to the far right of each section title.

After you have accessed the editor for what you want to edit, you will be met with the editor. It looks something like what is pictured below (note: I have changed my preferences to make the editing box larger).

An example of what the editor looks like (note: I've changed my preferences to make my editing box larger, so yours will probably be smaller).

After you have completed typing your edit, feel free to summarize what your edit was in the summary line. You may also select the options of denoting your edit as a minor edit and "Watch this page", which will make any edits to the page appear in your watchlist. To access your watchlist, click the "Watchlist" link under the section "User Information" to the left of the page.

To save your edits, click the "Save page" button. However, before you do this, it is highly recommended that you double-check your edits by clicking the "Show preview" button. This will bring up a preview of what the page/section will look like with your edit. But be careful; it is only a preview, and to actually save your edits to the page, you must scroll down to the editor below the preview. You may also choose to view specifically what you have changed by clicking the "Show changes" button.

When previewing a page, this warning message will appear at the top of the preview reminding you to save your edits once ready.

Well, that's all I have for this lesson. Stay tuned for the next lesson which will cover text options and how to create pages, add sections, and add links.